Woman recovering after breaking through ice to rescue dog in southwest Calgary park

Daryl Slade, Calgary Herald04.18.2014

Janine Bremner (left) and friend Pam Gillham (right) with Pam's Rotweiller dog Nero. Bremner went out on to thin ice of pond at Griffith Woods Park in southwest community of Discovery Ridge on Sunday, April 13, 2014, to save Nero who had fallen through thin ice.

A Calgary woman is nursing scrapes and bruises on her body and first-degree frostbite, but is very much relieved after saving her friend’s year-old Rottweiler dog last weekend.

Nero, a nearly two-year-old Rottweiler, had fallen through thin ice into the frigid water of a pond in a southwest park in Discovery Ridge on Sunday.

Janine Bremner said she and her friend Pam Gillham were walking and throwing sticks for their dogs to fetch at Griffith Woods Park when Nero disappeared for a couple of minutes. By the time they found him, he had fallen though the ice and was struggling to keep his head above the 1.5-metre deep water.

“He was very tired, trying to get out ... that’s when I figured he was in big trouble,” Bremner said on Tuesday. “I had to do something fast to get him out of the water.”

She said the ice was thin at the edge but got thicker as she first crawled then gingerly walked out nearly 10 metres, stomping to break the ice as she went. Then it was very thin where Nero fell through.

“I was breaking a path for him to come back.” Bremner said. “It was up to my chest, but if I took a couple more steps out, it would have been over my head. Because I broke the ice as I walked, he was able to swim back to shore.

Bremner said she was soaked from the ice cold water, so she hurried back to her car. Gillham also ushered Nero to a warm place to recover from his ordeal.

“She has more courage than me. She reacted quicker,” said Gillham. “Nero was dead-centre in the middle of the pond and pretty much stuck there. He would have gone down if he was there much longer. It was a scary moment for the both of us. We do a lot of walking along the river and this time Nero was too quick and we couldn’t stop him.

“I say (to Janine), ‘Holy cow, you’re quick and brave.’ Lucky she didn’t get hypothermia. People have got to be careful, but this had never happened before.”

Carol Henke, spokeswoman for the Calgary fire Department, said prevention is the best way to avoid such incidents.

“If you’re walking your pet and are close to water, keep your pet on a leash — even in an off-leash area,” she said. “If you don’t you are putting your pet at risk and you at risk.

“With the changing temperatures, you never know when there is thin ice. The best practice is to stay off the ice altogether. It may not hold their weight. We always want people to call 911 right away. If we don’t know something happened, we can’t get rolling and help. In an emergency people always want to do the right thing and help. In this case, everyone was fortunate nobody was seriously hurt.”

Bremner said it was a scary incident, but she has no regrets.

“I would totally do it over again, because the main thing is everybody walked away OK,” said Bremner. “I’m mending from bruises and scrapes and have to keep warm for a month.

“You just react in these circumstances. That’s what I did and what I had to do — get the dog out. I would feel devastated if I hadn’t done anything to help him. Thank God my dog, (Bichon-shih Tzu) Sam didn’t go out on to the ice that far or she would have gone through the same hole.”

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Woman recovering after breaking through ice to rescue dog in southwest Calgary park

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